With me, it’s not that I’ve lost a job, or have huge health care bills or even have to take care of children.  I’m trying to live on a scholarship that gets hacked down to only 80% of its size just because it crosses the border.  Imagine having to pay a 20% tax on your income ON TOP OF the federal taxes that already get taken out of it… yes…. it’s very sad.

The reason for this 20% cut is due to the economy: Canada’s dollar does well when oil is being sold and building is happening around the world (because it needs so much of Canada’s natural resources).  When the world economy goes down, Canada’s dollar unfairly drops because it is perceived to only be a “commodity currency.”  But let me tell you, brave investor, how sound Canada’s economy is (no hidden things off balance sheets and esoteric bubbles waiting to pop anywhere)… just ignore the whole “commodity currency” perception, even if Canada is still a major (unrecognized) supplier of oil to the U.S.

So what that means is that I’m borrowing extra money to make rent this month, and I’m not buying the books I’d usually buy for my classes and I haven’t gone out to the show as I usually might lately.  I won’t be able to make my investment targets for this year.  The investments I do have have gone down… oh… 30%? I’m not as worried about that aspect because I am still fairly young and I know they’ll have time to come back up again.

I’ve been hesitant to think about myself as “feeling the recession” unless I actually did and do - it seems that alot of the US media like to tell people how to feel, indeed, what they ARE currently feeling, and then it seems everyone just goes along with that…

the question is: did you receive a pay cut?  have you lost your job?  do you suddenly have huge new expenses for some reason?  If all you’re dealing with is a slight rise in food prices, I’d say… not much has really changed for you.  If you’ve lost most of your 401(k), that’s something to be concerned about.  If you’re getting worked up because the price of fruit has gone up, I don’t think that’s a big deal.  America probably has a ways to go to catch up to what the rest of the world has already been paying for such items.  And besides, in all of this, gas prices have come down again.  So I have to wonder when I hear about people saying how they’re really trying to cut back on holiday spending all of a sudden.  Don’t get me wrong - it’s always good to live below your means - but to hear so much of this all of a sudden, like a knee-jerk reaction to headlines that finally spout the word “recession” - I think is misguided.